Norfolk’s Deaf Havana’s nine-year career has been one of regular metamorphosis, as they have shifted from post-hardcore to Top 5-grazing commercial alternative rock. Here, they’re tearing up their own songwriting conventions. After years of writing songs on an acoustic guitar, frontman James Veck-Gilodi penned song titles first, those titles dictated the content and the songs themselves were written on software before the band got involved.
Strange, then, that this radical approach has led to such conventional, formulaic, 80s-style pop rock. The hooky Sinner and Ritual clearly have eyes on the 1975’s chart-hogging reinvention of a similar sound, but elsewhere Deaf Havana’s shift to pop is overproduced and laboured.
Their 2017 fourth album, All These Countless Nights, packaged Veck-Gilodi’s struggles with alcohol and success into radio-friendly songs, but here he repeats the theme again and again. The uniformity starts in those religiously-themed titles – Wake, Ritual, Hell, Holy, Worship and so on – which strive for profundity, but can descend into glib metaphors or cliches: love is “a drug”, Heaven is compared to “this Hell I’m living in” and so on. Ironically, when Veck-Gilodi does tear up the plan and get properly personal, the hushed, piano-led Saint and confessional Epiphany (in which he seeks the sanctity of domesticity) are haunting and sincere. Praise, also, for the London Contemporary Voices choir, who contribute gospel singing to five tracks. Their soaring, 40-second Wake and the sections of Sinner and Heaven where they burst into voice are truly lovely, but over 13 tracks such moments are few and far between.
